I was convinced for me it would be the 90hz refresh rate, or the improved touchscreen/haptics - but the moment I picked up the new OLED I knew my answer straight away:
The 30g they removed from the weight.
I’m sure that sounded minimal and inconsequential for a lot of us when we heard about it, but when you pick it up, you feel it immediately.
The original steam deck was always a bit too heavy for me to hold comfortably. Especially as I struggle with a disability which makes me pretty weak in general.
Now the device is so much more comfortable to hold. I can actually pick it up and hold it with one hand now, whereas before it would always overbalance and I could never keep it straight.
What’s the best upgrade from your experience so far, if any of you are lucky enough to have an OLED now?
It is absolutely wild how noticeable 30g is… but WiFi 6E is probably the best upgrade, I don’t have to feel like I need to dock the thing to install a new game <3 Also that fan is a maaaaassive improvement
It’s prompted me to look at upgrading my wifi 5 APs. Unfortunately poe wifi 6e APs are pretty expensive.
Save your money and just get some good wifi 6 AP’s. The difference between 6 and 6e is negligible in a residential environment
Maybe I’ll wait for wifi 7 to be ratified then. There’s minimal difference between wifi 5 and 6 as far as I can tell.
For wifi 7, you’ll also need a switch that supports PoE++ if you want to power them without an ac outlet
I see that now. Unfortunately all I have is a switch equipped with 2.5gbe poe+ ports.
Those 6E APs seem like a good fit for what I already own.
When I heard this, I immediately thought this was a big deal. It’s a device we use like a cellphone and I can absolutely tell when a phone got a bit of extra weight compared to the last and it shows pretty quickly.
I haven’t gotten mine yet, but I’m sure I’ll notice it, if not right away, it will show a bit in terms of just holding the device for a couple of hours.
Not trying to be contrarian, but I personally couldn’t tell the difference in weight. Interesting that some people think it’s a huge difference.
I didn’t expect to, but it was evident for me as soon as I picked it up
Literally my SD oled wouldn’t connect during out of the box setup because it was trying to associate in 6 GHz where WPA3 is required. Packet capture showed the SD deauthing itself after receiving the Association Response from the AP in 6 GHz.
When I go and try and setup the network manually it only lists None and WPA2 as security options. It won’t connect when WPA3-Personal is in Transition Mode either. Is your experience different? This seems like Valve completely overlooked the WPA3 requirement for 6 GHz operation.
Now if you break out of Steam and look underneath, it is running wpa_supplicant version 2.10 so it should have zero problems connecting to WPA3 in 6 GHz. It just seems the network manager on Steam does not support WPA3 period right now.
Yeah it’s like mice, going from a g pro to a g pro super light, very noticeable
The Wifi6E was the tipping point for me, I intend to have this docked in my living room and can’t be bothered to run an Ethernet cord to it. Just need to find a way to position my router closer so that I get a consistent connection since the range for 6GHz is rather ass lol
I wonder if it’s something to do with weight distribution. The chunkier battery is right in the middle, weight savings must be elsewhere (from the screen at least in part, I assume). Presumably that makes the weight a bit more concentrated in the center of the device, which I’d think might enhance how noticeable the weight reduction is.
What does docking do for installing a game?
The dock has an ethernet cable hooked into it